This Is How I'd Love You (16 page)

Though he can hardly make out Rogerson’s figure through the rain, he hears him chuckle. “Smart-ass,” he says as another deep rumble shakes the gray sky.

 • • • 

T
hey carry the final stretcher as best they can through the sloppy mud. As the rain continues, the ground is becoming less mud and more water. Charles loses his footing once or twice, but he grips the stretcher tightly so as to keep the poor boy steady. He’s got a pretty good gash across his head, as well as a bullet wound in his abdomen that is clotted with thick, dark blood. Rogerson is walking backward and Charles can see the lumps of the sandbags lining the trench not too far beyond him.

Through the pelting rain, the two of them catch one another’s eye. The rumble of another round of thunder begins in the dark sky and Rogerson mumbles, “Bad fucking weather for a war, Reid.”

Charles nods, but he notices that a few of the other soldiers around them have begun an awkward, hunched trot toward the trench. Charles knows there are other groggy, swollen-eyed soldiers hidden in that trench, their guns ready to fire rounds into the rain.

Charles puts his hand up, the stretcher lurching. The wounded boy screams, but all Charles can hear is the rumbling that is now so close to them that he feels it through his boots in the soles of his wet feet.

“Down, Rogerson,” he calls, still holding the stretcher with one hand, ignoring the boy’s pleas. “Not thunder,” he says, his words swallowed by the sudden rattle of bullets pelting them from the sky and the returning barrage from the trench.

Suddenly the smoke and the rain are inextricable. There is no way to tell which is emanating from the ground and which from the sky. It is as though the whole day is evaporating. He and Rogerson both hold tightly to the stretcher, running toward the trench. The ground is unforgiving, puddles and holes and mud making their progress slow and awkward. When his feet meet solid resistance, Charles looks down and notices that it is a dead body providing the traction to his boots.

He moves faster. They are almost there.

Just as Rogerson jumps into the trench, his end of the stretcher balanced on the sandbags, Charles falls. He lets go of the stretcher and scrambles to get up. Rogerson is pulling the stretcher toward him, into the trench, but Charles can’t quite find his footing. He doesn’t understand. He tries and falls again; the cold mud slaps his cheek like a fierce reprimand.

The buzz, the gnawing in the sky, drowns his curses. The ground seems to have vanished beneath him. Something about the physical world has changed. His balance is off; his hearing is fading inexplicably. The plane climbs higher, disappearing into the clouds. The sky goes quiet and Charles laughs, relieved that his clumsiness has not cost him his life. But once again, he tries to stand and cannot.

Rogerson grabs him beneath his arms and pulls him into the trench. It is then that Charles understands. He feels a deep burning and he is sure that his leg is on fire. The flames climb from his toes to his hip, crisp and hot. “Blanket,” he cries. “Quick. Put it out.” But there is no fire. There is no leg.

Or, rather, the leg has turned into a trough of blood. Nothing looks as it should. The mud-covered straw beneath him oozes through, mingling with the muck that was his leg. Charles hears Rogerson barking at the privates to find another stretcher. But what has been done will not be undone.

Rogerson heaves Charles over his own shoulder and runs through the putrid trench, Charles’s own vomit falling onto the filthy, wet, exhausted soldiers whose guns are still aimed at the sky.

Rogerson props Charles in the passenger seat of the King George, the blood ruining everything. “Not protocol,” Charles manages to say before he loses consciousness.

D
elighted by Mr. Reid’s new letter, but left completely unable to concentrate on her chores, Hensley follows the cats to their afternoon sunbath. She brings the embroidery basket with her, without any intention of working. Instead, she stares at the myriad colors of the floss, her fingers lingering on the silky, brilliant strands. With little effort, she could stitch nearly anything: cats in a garden, men in a motorcar, a baby in a cradle. But she wants none of it. She finds herself having to gasp for a breath every so often, as though even her automatic functions are in revolt. For some reason, Mr. Reid’s lovely letter has only made her more despondent.

Shutting the lid of the basket, she closes her eyes and wishes for the day’s end. But then, as soon as her eyes are closed, she opens them, wishing, instead, for the day to seize right here. To arrest itself and go no further. Let the sun remain just where it is, blazing hot, the other side of the earth in an eternal night. Then surely, her life, too, could be suspended, frozen without moving forward. She would not have to move forward into whatever drudgery is waiting for her. Any day now she might receive the expected proposal from Mr. Teagan (would he, really?), along with a telegram from Harold apprising her father of the particulars: the inevitable moment in which this trio of men will tell her they’ve arranged her future.

Just as she has decided to halt the day just where it is, she hears a loud noise from Berto and Teresa’s house up the hill. Leaving the cats and her embroidery basket, Hensley steps off the brick patio. She listens intently. But it is quiet again. The only noise is a lizard or rodent rustling in the dried leaves against the wall. She ventures several steps farther. Suddenly there is a voice, hardly audible, muttering. As Hensley climbs the hill, the sound gets fainter, as though she is walking away from its source. She stops and turns, looking down at the little brick patio where the cats still sleep. A sudden breeze lifts the hair from her neck and bangs the screen door against its frame. The cats look up from their naps simultaneously, startled. Hensley’s embroidery basket falls from its place on the crate, spilling the floss onto the bricks in a colorful mess. A cloud of dust circles Hennie’s face and stings her eyes. She shuts them, the darkness disorienting and dizzying. Then, as suddenly as it began, it stops.

She opens her eyes and the day looks just as it did moments ago. Still, the muttering has ceased, and she feels a stinging sense of lost possibility. As though the desert has spoken to her and she has not understood its meaning. Looking for reassurance, Hensley continues on her way up to Teresa and Berto’s house, hoping for a visit with Teresa.

As she approaches, she sees that the screen door is propped open with a heavy ceramic crock. There are several empty glass jars on either side of the door, like ornaments.

“Teresa,” she calls, a few feet away from the door. “Are you home?”

There is no reply. Instead, Hennie hears a scraping, as though someone is pushing a broom across the floor. She peeks her head inside. Her eyes, accustomed to the bright day, are blinded for a moment and she cannot see a thing.

A man’s voice comes at her from somewhere deep inside. “Who are you?”

Hennie jumps. She turns around and faces the open door, her hand on its hinges. “From down the hill. The superintendent’s daughter. Hensley Dench. Please excuse me. I was looking for . . . someone.”

“For my sister?”

“Um, I thought I heard something.”

“She’s not here. Probably working.”

“She’s my friend,” Hensley says, hoping that he’ll understand she is not there to snoop, that their secret is still safe. “Are you okay? I mean, is there anything you need?”

The scraping begins again. Hensley turns around, her eyes now adjusted to the dark room. There is a small cot in the far corner and a figure in it, holding on to a long wooden pole.

“Teresa doesn’t have any friends,” he says, with effort.

“Let me help you,” Hensley says, walking across the room and bending down to retrieve the small leather-bound book that the pole is aiming for. “Here,” she says, standing over the cot. “Is this what you need?”

His face is nearly identical to Teresa’s, except for the dark but meager whiskers that color his cheeks. He drops the pole on the ground beside him and takes the book from her hand.

For a moment, it seems he will not acknowledge her assistance. Then he brings the book to his face, breathing in its scent.

“Thank you. I’ve been working on that for an hour.”

“Oh, what a chore.” Hensley looks around the rest of the room. In the kitchen, grease from an uneaten breakfast plate wafts across the room.

“How are you feeling?” Hensley asks, looking back at his face.

He closes his eyes. “Half-dead.”

Hensley stares at his gaunt face. His hands have fallen to his chest again and his fingers are wrapped around the book with hardly any life.

“Shall I call for the doctor? I’m sure he would come if it’s urgent.” Hensley is confronted with the odor of urine nearby and as soon as her eyes see the metal jug beside his bed, she wishes she hadn’t.

He opens his eyes. “No. This is not urgent. This is ordinary; it’s how I feel every day that I can think clearly. Teresa has put the pistol far out of my reach. Even out of the pole’s reach. But, really, what’s the difference?”

Nobody has ever spoken to her so bluntly. Certainly not a stranger. She thinks of Mr. Reid’s letters. The pistol that accompanies him everywhere. The bullets that no doubt search for him, day after day. The death that surrounds him, that he struggles mightily against.

“The difference is everything,” she says, her heart racing. “It is absolutely everything.”

“For you, maybe. Not for me. This cot is a coffin, only the corpse is uncooperative.”

Looking at his pallor, the way his fingers hover around the book, the fatigue behind his eyes, Hensley worries he is sicker than anyone knows.

“What has happened to you? Have you become a ghost?” he suddenly asks.

Hensley furrows her brow. “Whatever are you talking about?”

“Are all my hallucinations caused by this fever? I swear I saw my mother. Right here, in this room.”

Hensley shakes her head, her face blank.

“Do you know my mother?” he asks, confused.

“No, I’m sorry. I never knew her.”

“Do you know how she died?”

“Your mother?” As she wonders how in the world he would expect her to know this, she is struck by an image. In a city she’s never seen before, a woman runs through an outdoor market. She is being chased by something ferocious, but it is out of sight. Hensley hears the growling in her ears. Her heart races with the anxiety of the hunted. And then a blast of warmth radiates from her belly to the tips of her fingers. She folds her arms across her chest. “No. I have no idea.”

Berto looks away from her, to the wall beside his cot. He begins to speak, slowly describing their history. Hensley strains to hear all of his words. He tells her that his mother, like so many, had been widowed by the revolution. They lived on a large cattle and rum plantation that covered a hundred acres outside Mexico City. His father was the foreman. It was a good job. He was tired every night. Berto and Teresa had a carefree childhood. They drank fresh milk every day, often straight from the teat, caught grasshoppers, relishing the way their legs pushed hard against their closed hands, tried to pull fish from the stream that ran behind their quarters, and never wanted for a hot meal. Their mother was a midwife and had delivered all the babies on the ranch. She knew rhymes and songs and how to treat a sour stomach or a broken bone. The parish priest taught them and the other children how to read. A nun spoke to them in English.

When Madero was shot, most of the laborers left. Things were changing. Resentment grew. Everybody was somebody’s enemy.

Berto continues to stare at the wall, his voice weakening. Hensley leans over him, bound to his words.

During the upheaval, the jefe left the hacienda and went to California. Took his valet, his mistress, and a truck full of rum. His wife was left behind with the crystal and the gold chandeliers and an empty set of servants’ beds. She asked Berto’s father to stay. For protection. She paid him in silver goblets. One a day. Berto’s mother objected. She wanted to leave.

When the mob came, there were seventeen goblets. One in every pot, two in their father’s worn-out boots, three in their mother’s medical bag, six pushed into the bottom of their parents’ mattress, and one under each of their blankets. At night, as he and Teresa closed their eyes and listened to their mother humming the fragments of a lullaby, they each tucked a goblet under one arm like a stiff, cold doll.

Berto’s face becomes still, as though perhaps he has fallen asleep. His eyes are closed. But then, he continues, his voice barely a whisper.

His father met the men—some of whom who had walked the fields at his side just months before, supplying branding irons and dirty jokes until sunset—at the door of the plantation’s hacienda. His mother took him and Teresa to the barn and covered them in hay. They stayed there all night, holding their goblets tight. The donkeys were braying and stomping, the straw scratched their bare arms and legs, and the smell of animal manure was everywhere. His mother shivered between them, barely able to control her panic.